Its a classic football cliche “Form is temporary, class is permanent.” But I’m not so sure, is class really for good? What about social climbers, by which I mean people who aggressively pursue a higher station in life as opposed to chatty cliff scalers. I, for example, was firmly convinced I was working class growing up. It seems ridiculous I would have had such delusions of grandeur now (in our family we’re a bit downwardly aspirational, my dad’s an ex-public schooly turned trade unionist; to be working class is a dream of his) so there I was Feargus Wylie Woods Dunlop thinking myself working class. I had four names! One of them was Wylie! Who was I kidding? I got a bit of an awakening when I left the very rough (compared to Bath) Peasedown St John and moved to the very tranquil (compared to Tripoli) Wakefield.

In my first month living there we had a BNP rally in the street which confused the hell out of me because it was a majority immigrant street. Then I realised intimidation not recruitment was the real motive, arseholes (BNP not the immigrants although I’m sure some are, its just the law of averages)

In Wakey suddenly I was posh, it was weird. I’d always been the non-posh one; my school was in special measures, I can’t speak French, we didn’t take skiing holidays (OK we took one) and now here I was being asked genuinely if I knew Prince William. It was odd. Just before irate Northerners write in, I’m not suggesting all of West Yorkshire is an area deprived of poshness, but the places I frequented clearly were.

So back to class, what is it? I heard recently that you’re not really middle class if you drink instant coffee- “One really should grind one’s own” dontcha know. I’ve always like the bizarre middle class restaurant accent; an inflection of French when ordering salmon encrute (I can’t be truly middle class I have no idea how to spell encrute) a hint of Italian when ordering a Parma ham and mozzarella ciabatta, but what bugs me is they never adopt an Indian accent when ordering biryani do they?

If you’d like to watch a clip of my dad Alastair ‘Scargill” Dunlop giving a rather good account of why he took to the streets Saturday watch this clip. http://on.fb.me/gP1EpD

My blogging has gone to pot recently, as I was so lovingly told by my family at a recent gathering. I suppose I should be flattered they take the time to read my little posts in order to be able to tell me authoritively how shit the last one was. But you see the latter really takes the shine off the former, like learning you’ve been invited to dinner with one of the most powerful men in the country, only to learn its Eric Pickles.

Gotta love Pickles, comics around the country breathed a sigh of relief as the easy gag of two jags shuffled off only to be replaced by a shabbier version lacking even the dubious sort of almost lefty-ish conscience of Prescott.

Speaking of the government and all things official, I loved the census yesterday. Putting ‘actor’ as my profession and ‘fighting short sighted governmental cuts’ as what that entails. I did make a couple of reading errors though. I put english as my first language then answered the supplemental ‘Jonny foreigner’ question of how well do you speak English. I put very well and added in brackets ‘with a pleasing timbre of bass baritone and excellent diction, available for voice overs, and adverts’.

Anyone have any idea why question seventeen was intentionally left blank? Is this a new superstition that I’ve not cottoned onto yet, finally replacing the stigma of my being born on the 13th? I don’t know if it was a Friday but it was a six minutes past seven (I realised half way through that you can’t actually be born at 6:66 can you? Stuck with it though dedication.)